Blair School of Music

Learning/Information Resources, Facilities, and Services

The learning/information resources, facilities, and services provided by the Blair School are sufficient and appropriate to support its teaching, research, and service mission. Assessment procedures for these units are described in Blair’s response to 3.3.1.

1. Blair advisory program: the Blair School of Music runs an in-house advising program staffed by members of the Blair faculty. This advising program, substantially revised in F05, matches 4-6 students with each academic advisor. We have a two-tiered advisor structure, with 8 freshman advisors and 27 advisors for upper class students. In all, then, 35 advisors serve 173 music majors. Training is offered for (and required of) all advisors. Additionally, freshmen are paired with an upperclass student (their “segue”) who guides them through the initial registration process and serves as a student mentor throughout the year. Additionally, the studio faculty are officially recognized as secondary advisor; they are brought into discussions of students’ academic progress and they help to guide students to summer programs and to a fully developed academic load.

Assessment of the Advisory program is handled annually through surveys of students (a sample advisor survey is attached); additionally, annual updates to the Advisor Notebook and mandatory annual training for faculty advisors ensure quality and consistency across the Blair advising programs. Recruitment of SEGUES is similarly handled on an annual basis by one of the Assistant Deans; these student peers are guided by faculty-led and peer-led training sessions in preparation for their advising duties during the Fall orientation period. Feedback regarding this program has been largely positive, and the program continues to be tweaked on an annual basis.

The advising program for the B.Mus. program is sufficient and appropriate. Our program is in line with practices of peer institutions; it has been used as a model by the Music Department of U.C. Santa Cruz and other institutions accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music. It is also successful in that students in a complex degree program manage to fulfill their degree requirements. The Blair advising program is supplemented by the new Vanderbilt Visions orientation program aimed at Freshmen, and by other aspects of the VU orientation program (DOREWAYs, Squirrel Camp, Summer Academic Orientation Program [SAOP], and so on).

2. MUSC and MUSL Tutoring: Peer tutoring within the Music Theory and Music Literature departments supports individual students in mastery of academic components of the B.Mus. degree programs. Tutoring is “pushed” to at-risk students; any student identified by a MUSC or MUSL faculty member as needing supplemental drill or one-on-one instruction is accommodated through the Student Assistantship or peer tutoring program.

Assessment of the program is handled first and foremost through student success rates. One major constituency for peer tutoring consists of students reported on the mid-semester deficiency reports as being academically at-risk. The majority of students in this cohort who pursue peer tutoring as offered have successfully completed their coursework in the semester in question. Departmental needs for tutoring have grown commensurate with the expansion of the program, and assessment of need is handled through the annual budgetary review process. (See, for example, the MUSL department SA request from 18 March 2003, attached.) Revisions to the curriculum have also affected tutoring needs; the Comp/Theory department decision to abolish “trailer sections” in the MUSC sequence has led to an expanded need for tutoring services to ready students for successful completion of the required coursework; remediation with peer tutors will henceforth precede students’ retake of Music Theory classes.

These resources are sufficient for the goals of the Blair School. More one-on-one tutoring is available per capita at the Blair School than at comparable School of Music institutions (e.g. UNC-Chapel Hill, Ohio State, and Rice University). Moreover, Blair School students are encouraged to pursue both peer tutoring and direct consultation with faculty during office hours. Alumni report that their Blair-based educational support far exceeded those of their graduate school colleagues from other institutions.

Appropriateness: Within the B.Mus. degree, the most frequent areas needing remediation are the courses in the Theory and the Music Literature sequences; the addition of peer support has supplemented direct faculty instruction to increase student mastery in these key areas of the degree programs. The support provided by the Blair School meets departmental requests and passed NASM review in the Blair School’s last accreditation cycle.

3. Anne Potter Wilson Music Library: The educational programs of the Blair School of Music rely heavily on the VU Library system, most notably the Anne Potter Wilson Music Library. The Compliance Certification Report of the September 2006 addressed library resources at length. Comments here focus therefore on Blair-specific resources.

The Anne Potter Wilson Music Library is both sufficient and appropriate for our B.Mus. degree programs. The collection of the Music Library is one of the largest in the nation for a School of Music housing only baccalaureate degree programs. The collection continues to grow in areas directly related to the pedagogical mission of the school; individual faculty may make recommendations for purchases, and proposals for new courses (through the Blair curriculum committee) involve the preparation by the faculty member or department(s) concerned of a list of needed materials, the majority of which are typically acquired before the course is offered for the first time. Materials needed for research by the faculty and by students are similarly supported; most requests pertaining to faculty research have been honored, and other items (including out of print materials and individual articles) are readily available to the faculty member or student through the Interlibrary Loan services. The music library is one of the special strengths of school, and passed muster with the National Association of Schools of Music during the Blair School’s accreditation in F03.

4. Teaching Spaces, including Labs:The Blair school houses both Ear-training and Sight-singing labs and Keyboard Harmony/MIDI labs; each lab station is equipped with a computer, electronic piano keyboard, and software packages used in these two skill-based course sequences required of all undergraduate B.Mus. students. Additional machines are available to host the major composition/scoring programs; the school is about evenly divided between Sibelius and Finale, the two leading software notation programs on the market today. The Blair classrooms are likewise equipped with appropriate technological capabilities. Standard equipment includes CD, DVD, cassette tape, phonograph, laser disk, VHS, and projection equipment as well as computer hook-ups in wall-mounted racks in each room. Many of the faculty use powerpoint or video or audio playback as part of their teaching techniques. The Blair School houses 130 computers (a mixture of MACs and PCs) including 30 lab systems, and 75 printers. Configurations are determined by the custom user’s needs.

Student and faculty work-space needs are assessed annually by the Space Committee and by the Technology Committee based on anticipated instructional demands. (See, for example, selected technological recommendations from 2001 and 2006, attached.) They are also assessed via the annual budget survey (see attached budget survey document, particularly section 5 on “new equipment and computer software.”) Upgrades and regular maintenance have kept the Blair School within appropriate standards for technological delivery of instruction; the school remains on a par with peer institutions. MIDI capabilities have been extended with the development of new course offerings (e.g. Computer Recording Technology Seminar) and with revision to core courses (e.g. update to Keyboard Harmony lab materials, F06; adoption of Auralia [ear training software] in ETSS sequence, S03). Meetings between Blair Council and Associate Dean in S07 have led to recommendations to the VU Committee on Freshmen Orientation for the inclusion of technology orientation sessions as part of Freshman Orientation or Vanderbilt Visions in future years; the Blair School will implement other aspects of technological orientation at the new “Sophomore Orientation” scheduled for Fall 2007.

5. Instrumental check-out and equipment maintenance: Students in the B.Mus. program can pursue individual instruction and ensemble experience on Blair instruments where individual personal equipment cannot reasonably be expected. Violin students pursing viola instruction, for example, sign out a student viola for the semester in which they enroll; students taking secondary instruments as part of their Musical Arts/Teacher Education program similarly have access to school instruments.

The needs of the program are assessed through curricular and budgetary processes; new courses are screened explicitly for their equipment needs and must pass muster with the Dean and with the Curriculum Committee before a new course can be recommended to the full faculty for a vote. (Steel drum and “Viola for Violinists” have both occasioned such discussions in the last 3 years. Curriculum Committee minutes for Viola for Violinists are attached.) Similarly, collegium instruments (recorders and viols) are purchased through faculty recommendation as the needs of curricular programming require. The Blair School’s holdings of instruments continues to expand on an ad-hoc basis, but its current holdings passed NASM review in Fall 2003, and the school has sufficient stock for current curricular offerings.

6. MA5 field experience: Students in the Musical Arts/Teacher Education program have regular opportunities for field observation, opportunities which have allowed students multiple access points to real-life experience. Students in this program participate in annual “practica” in which students observe and participate in music teaching at the K-12 levels at a variety of public and private institutions locally; students reflect on their experiences in time logs, group discussions, and student journals. (A sample MA5 field experience journal is attached.) These student-produced materials are evaluated annually at the departmental level. The program of field offerings are also assessed directly by three to five departmental field leaders on an ad-hoc basis. The roster of MA5 sites has been adjusted on an annual basis, with unproductive sites being dropped from the list and new programs added as they come to the attention of the MA5 faculty. Students speak highly of their experiences in this area, and licensure rates for MA5 students remain high. A perceived redundancy between Junior and Senior year practicum experiences led to a curricular adjustment to the program during S06 to eliminate one year (of four) of practica experience. (Requirements for student teaching during the graduate year, however, remain unchanged.)

These preparatory programs have been a signal accomplishment in the development of the 5-year degree program. Graduates of the program cite this unique set of experiences as one of the most beneficial aspects of Vanderbilt’s programmatic design.

7. Performance Hall tech support (costuming, sets, performance, playback, PR, programs, etc): The performance halls provide direct support to the Blair School in its mission to expand the horizons of musical expression by providing a supportive environment for performance pursuits by faculty and students, and to offer a forum for visiting artists, scholars, and composers of national stature. The support provided by individual staff is assessed annually through staff evaluations in consultation with all Blair Faculty. (See attached staff evaluation form.) Moreover, the needs of the school are assessed by the Blair Technology Committee and by the Concerts Committee, who make budgetary and programmatic recommendations. These recommendations have resulted in revisions to the Concerts programming processes and the development of the EMS scheduling system ( They have also led to the recent establishment of a full-time technology staff person (in addition to the Technology Liaison, who oversees several part-time assistants and is responsible for faculty, staff and classroom computer support, and by the Supervisor of Technical Services, who maintains the recording equipment and supervises recording and playback operation, lights, and other aspects of concert production; the latter two part-time positions were described in our Compliance Certification report.) Equipment upgrades are predicated on a 4-year replacement cycle.

The Blair School’s concert halls and their staffing were judged to fall within appropriate parameters during the most recent National Association of Schools of Music site visit (F03). The expanded physical plant (2000-2001) and the concomitant addition of a full-size concert hall has directly benefited not only the curricular offerings – allowing ensembles to expand by 1 or 2 concerts per semester, for example – but also in the depth and scope of the Concerts Series programs. More than 400 concerts, lectures and events are now regularly housed at the Blair School of Music, in keeping with the guidelines provided in the school’s mission statement: “The Blair School of Music serves as the focal point within Vanderbilt University for the study of music as a human endeavor and as a performing art….”

7a. (for 3.8.1) The Blair School’s emphasis on music in live performance places the performance halls at the center of school life. These facilities are appropriate to the teaching, research and service provided in line with the mission statement:

The Blair School of Music serves as the focal point within Vanderbilt University for the study of music as a human endeavor and as a performing art. Music offers to all persons a medium for the expression of the human spirit. Accordingly, the Blair School of Music addresses music through a broad array of academic, pedagogical, and performing activities…. In its commitment to professional and public service, the Blair School of Music contributes to cultural and intellectual life at Vanderbilt University and throughout the region through concerts, lectures, and recitals by faculty and students, and by providing a forum for visiting artists, scholars, and composers of national stature.

The Blair School doubled the size of its physical plant; the new wing, which included several new classrooms, a number of teaching studios, and a new performance hall, the Martha Rivers Ingram Center for the Performing Art, opened in 2000-01. Overall, the resources of the school are sufficient and appropriate for the work it undertakes. A description of the facilities, published on the Blair website at addresses the kinds of spaces necessary to, appropriate for, and sufficient for a school of music:

•Classrooms, teaching studios and practice rooms afford the finest equipment, technology and acoustical conditions. Blair now offers more than 60 teaching studios, over 50 practice rooms, three electronic labs, and three interactive practice rooms.
•Blair now boasts two performance venues: the Steve and Judy Turner Recital Hall, which provides an intimate space for solo and chamber music performances, and the newly completed Martha Rivers Ingram Center for the Performing Arts.
•The Anne Potter Wilson Music Library has doubled in size. The facility contains over 40,000 volumes and scores, more than 5500 CDs, 14,500 LPs and hundreds of cassettes and videotapes. New CD, DVD and VHS players have been added. The library is now linked with the main Vanderbilt campus integrated library system.

Steve and Judy Turner Recital Hall:Blair’s principal performance hall for twenty years, Turner Hall was updated during the summer of 2002 to provide an intimate, acoustically superior setting for solo and chamber music. The 286-seat room is a superb setting for student and faculty recitals, as well as lectures and guest performers.

The Martha Rivers Ingram Center for the Performing Arts:Completed in 2001, the performance wing includes
•Ingram Hall, a 618-seat performance hall with full staging capability including orchestra pit, opera scene shop, loading dock, dressing rooms and Green room
•Choral Rehearsal Hall with state-of-the-art interactive technology, seats 80
•Instrumental Rehearsal Hall for performance, classes and overflow seating
•Conductors’ offices and administrative offices
•NightPro audio recording studioBlair

ACCESSIBILITY OF FACILITIES:Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University is an accessible facility with a variety of services including wheelchair accommodations, accessible parking and building access to all venues and public areas, and assistive listening devices.

These facilities were deemed sufficient by the National Association of Schools of Music during our accreditation visit in F03.

In short, the Blair School provides and supports student and faculty access to a variety of learning and information resources. It assesses these offerings on an annual basis. These collections and resources are sufficient and appropriate to support its educational, research, and public service programs.